Besides that, no one who knows me would look for me there. And they’re not shut down.  They just opened Tuesday.  Just park nearby and buy your tickets or your bracelet.  You’re good!

After yet another day of seeing the American experiment go sideways through my Lenovo’s 14-inch screen, and not being able to change any of it, I needed to get away.  I needed to put my body through something.  Being slightly too old for the military, too poor for one of those private quasi-military bootcamps (and not wanting to miss all those October season premiers), what could I do to shake my feeling of futile restlessness?  I knew the answer.  Go straight to the 81st Southwest District Livestock Show.  It was armband night and my arm was looking as naked and shamefaced as a sheared sheep on an Iranian beach.

So I tooled in the ‘06 Impala down East and then West Third, hung the left at Spring Hill Road and took the right onto Fair Park Road, ready for action and blissfully unaware of G-forces.  I showed the security guy at the gate my media pass and explained my project to ride the scary rides and tell the story.  “I like that,” he said, laughing. He turned me loose.

The idea was to pay the very reasonable $25 for the orange armband that would let me get on the rides that scare  kids (some), that worry parents, that challenge the laws of physics to a draw, with both parties afterward maintaining an aggrieved silence, too tired out to bicker.  I wanted to be upside down, thrashed side-to-side, up way too high and moving way too fast. My stomach probably didn’t, but he had no choice and no Dramamine. My body tonight would be the authoritarian dystopia most living down here long for.

First, I’d asked some of the SWARK crew if they wanted to film it, much as I’d done when I made up my mind in August to ride Otis, the mechanical bull at the Watermelon Festival.  But there was no availability.  I’d do what I had to do alone.  Maybe I’d get a few iPhone snaps? Better not to try.  I just bought mine and I’d rather not  watch it go flying 100 miles an hour into the works of something like the Sizzler?  The Sizzler?  Wasn’t that the name of an old steakhouse chain?  Was that ride going to tenderize me, or was it going to marinate and serve me up steaming on one of those woody plates?  All of that and more as it turned out.

(I should mention here a bit of a phobia I’ve had since my mid-teen years.  My sister Jennifer and I got dared at something like the 58th Livestock Show to go on this Ferris wheel that had a bit of a wild card about it.  Instead of the comfortable little benches, this one had you get into a metal cage that constantly revolved as the big wheel turned.  When the loose little brace holding us down gave out while we were still whirling around, we both ended up tumbling around, avoiding those little cutouts that anyone could easily plummet through.  I called out to the attendant, but we went through all seven revolutions, me watching my pens, keys and change snow down on everybody waiting, Jennifer holding on emitting only the occasional sob.  Such an experience does not an eager amusement park ride aficionado make.)

Since then, the only rides I’ve been on were at the instigation of a stepdaughter about ten years ago, who got me on a drop tower by telling me I didn’t have what it took to take it on.  Well, I took the bait and we sat down in a comfortably padded seat that was then elevated about 75 feet in the air, high enough in the Bolivar County fairgrounds to see that the Kroger roof really needed attention. I didn’t cry, but when the attendant pushed the button and all the compressed air keeping us aloft blew out, I could feel my stomach around my back teeth.  “Let’s do it again,” Hope said when we soft-landed.  “You go right ahead,” I heard myself say.

The first ride I took on Wednesday night was the Ferris wheel.  I figured it was a good entry-level choice.  You go high but you’re not yet feeling the warp of spinning and rushing. I was already nervous while standing in line, especially when I saw that the backs of the little cars said, “DO NOT ROCK THE SEAT.”  The question arose.  Why make those seats rockable in the first place? 

I spoke with little girls barely tall enough to be admitted to the ride’s steps.  “Have you ever rode one of these?” I asked, hoping that by calming them down I’d quieten my own nerves.  

“Sure.  This is my fifth time,” said one.

“My seventh,” said the other one, not to be outdone.

“That’s great,” I said with a gritted-teeth grin.  “It’s been about ten years since I’ve been on one.  I hope I don’t get stuck on top and have a panic attack.”

What was I saying?  Ten-year-olds don’t need to know about my mental health struggles. For them it should be all excitement, getting a better view of the trees, all that good stuff.  What was I doing giving them a vocabulary lesson from the rockable seat of my darkest neuroses.

“Seems like fun, though,” I said, trying to recover my dignity. They looked at each other with doubt in their eyes, turned away and were then ushered to their seat, which they took like they were only going to get their hair styled.

As soon as I took my own seat and the metal guard came down while I tightened my seatbelt, I began to experience those most dreaded moments before a ride starts, anticipatory fear.  “Why did I get on this? I don’t do well at heights. How did I forget that?” I considered taking a photo or two with the iPhone set on 16:9 so I could place it at the beginning of this article and display it at parties on my Vizio 50-inch, but as we went up an unfortunate fact became obvious. I couldn’t trust my sweat-moistened, shaky hands to hold the thing steady or hold the thing at all.

The ride got going, interrupting what that Al Franken character would have called my “stinkin’ thinkin’.” I tried to keep breathing and above all NOT ROCK MY SEAT.  But the speed of the wheel and its slowing and then speeding up again set the thing jostling.  I tried to keep my eyes open as my view of the rest of the wheel receded and there was nothing between me and the four stories of air I’d be falling through.  I’d hoped to see downtown Hope from here, but could only make out the surrounding remnants of the forest that was cleared to make Fair Park. Could those trees loft me down gently or would I feel every sharp, ripping limb as I crashed down smoking like a meteor wearing a laminated press pass on a lanyard?

When I felt the ride slowing, I really felt like I’d earned something.  But this was only the warmup ride.  Could I hold up to The Sizzler, The Millenium, The Dreaded Ride With No Visible Name, The Cliffhanger and The Zero Gravity?  

As I passed the Ferris wheel attendant, I said to him, “Yeah, didn’t like that.”  He didn’t look like he understood.

For the next challenge, at least I could say it stayed near ground level.  The Sizzler’s cars also had nice padding and comfortingly rigid guards and seatbelts.  But I’d seen the thing going.  I knew something of what I was in for.  What I didn’t know was how it would feel to a 53-year-old body.

When it got going, it didn’t hold back.  In three seconds, you’re being whirled around at about 90 miles an hour.  But so are your innards.  You suddenly become very aware that your rib cage wants very much to go to the extreme right while your butt wants to stay where it is and your face wants to abandon the relationship with your skull.  Take a picture? You can’t imagine releasing either of your hands from the guard bar.  And if you were to work it into your pocket and bring out the black mirror, there’d be no steadying, no grasping, no moving your thumb into position to press that white oval, except by unlucky accident just before you watched hundreds of dollars go sling-shotting away, probably into some poor kid’s newly braced teeth.

So I was unsteady, a little addle-headed, climbing off the car and putting feet on ground.  But the 11-year-olds around me hooted, high-fived.  Some got back in line.  I wanted to lie down on the grass and think calmly about honey on wheat toast. Nature’s Own wheat toast and Papa’s Honey. Mmmm. Very mild and very good.

But there was no time. The armband only lasts so long.  This was when I resolved to take on the No Name Ride.  You got into a cage on the end of a 40-foot steel column and that column alternated with a second one, turning gradually 45 then 90 then 180 degrees.  You were still inside and you’re upside down when the cage you’re in is at its highest.  Its concept reminded me of the ferris wheel my sister and I tumbled around in.  I got in line before I could think too much.

As one young lady got out, having undergone the No Name treatment, I asked, “Was it bad?  Do you stay strapped down.”  She wouldn’t say a word back.  I was some pudgy, grey-bearded guy in a Mark Twain t-shirt.  I wouldn’t have talked to me either.

My claustrophobia kicked in immediately as I got into the cage.  When the guard bar was brought down, I realized quickly this would not do.  Having a 36-inch waste made riding the dreaded No Name a no go.  I realized if I rode that way for six of seven revolutions, I’d suffer the fate of the Black Dahlia. I got the attendant’s attention and, as I felt I had to do for the honor of the challenge I set for myself, asked whether the guard could be adjusted.  He wasn’t hearing it.  He told me to just get out.  

It was a great feeling, this reprieve.  So I had to go ruin it, masochist that I am, by getting in line to ride The Millenium, the ride that looked like a giant tarantula dressed like Uncle Sam.  It was really only an elevated Merry-Go-Round.  But it did go up quite high.  As I found my car, Justin Timberlake sang through an immense speaker about having sunshine in his pocket, causing a carbonation in my ear canals. Maybe this one would be easy.

No.  After I spoke some notes into my Sony digicorder, I forgot to hit pause.  Here’s what it heard from me. “Ok?  Ok?  What?  Woooooooo.   [Song changes to The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face].  Ayyyyyyyy.   Noooooooo.   Aughhhhhhhhh.  [Expletive deleted.  Several more expletives deleted. Enough to inspire my mother to look for the Lifebuoy.] Help me!  Nooooo.  How long’s this thing gonna---?  Noooooooo.”

These were the sounds of a middle-aged man realizing the ride was not built for him, that it should have had an age limit and that he hadn’t really felt his face since The Sizzler.

Before taking to The Millennium, I had cast a longing eye toward one of the food trucks.  The image of a foot-long corndog yearned toward me for half a minute or so.  I’d only had a can of Progresso Roast Beef Vegetable, two cinnamon-chromium supplements (good for blood sugar, the bottle says) and one grapeseed extract capsule (good for blood pressure, maybe) for lunch.  After The Millennium was done with me, there was no thought of food except a new requirement to try to retain it.

I needed a rest before the next scary ride.  I chose the Scat II, which looked a bit like moving wedding cakes.  How bad could it be? Well . . . bad enough to trigger thoughts about my divorce.  You stood against the white latticed metal worried for your sweaty grip, watching all the nine-year-olds sing songs and yelp with the fun while your body said, “I know where that soup is and I can have it out for you inside five minutes.”

Emerging down the metal steps, I know I looked pale, the flopsweat glinting to reflect those colored bulbs.  I felt like a frog in a jar that had been shaken.  

I looked over at The Cliffhanger.  People were having to lie down full-length, facing the ground as the machine wheeled you up at about a 25 degree angle toward where the pine needles started on the surrounding trees in as near an experience to flying like Superman.  It could wait a few minutes.  I instead opted for the Zero-G ride, one of those UFO-looking round cages that you stood on the rim of while it spun and tilted to the point of going perpendicular to terra firma.  That seemed more doable.  Seemed.

Next to me on the Zero-G was a young man of about eight who asked me what Zero-G meant.  “G is for gravity, which is the force holding our feet to the ground,” I told him jovially.  “And this ride is going to bring the measure of that to zero.  So we’re going to float.”  I was partly right.  As I hung on and the belt held me in place by a mere one-inch loop strapped over a thin, metal protrusion, it was my soup that started to float, not my body.  The running commentary on gravity I had planned in a riveting mansplain to the boy fled my mind.  I could see, to make the ride more exciting, he was bowing down in his place.  I was just thinking, “Not now.  Please not now.”

I held it in until the ride stopped.  Just after seeing my erstwhile neighbor skipping away, eager to try out his next conquest, I found myself having hurried behind one of the shooting galleries, crouching with a purpose.

After a rest spent wandering among the vegetables and fruits on calm display fresh and lovingly coaxed into jars pickled and jellied, I found the courage to take on The Cliffhanger.  Again there was that interval of wondering why I was subjecting myself to this, lying dorsal side up, about to be lofted who knows how fast among the dark pines.  For that moment, though, I was lying face down, my chin finding a black-padded guard, presumably to keep me from taking a knock-out jostle.  Was this what it looked like in those last moments for Mary Queen of Scots before . . . ?

But the ride lurched and got going.  It was all I could do to keep my eyes open as for all my brain and adrenal glands knew I was careening through the air at around 75 mph headed toward a tree, the Scat II, the Yoyo swings.  I kept my chin on that padded guard and tried not to inhale from it.  I failed.

As I came off the ride, someone in line asked me, “How was it?”  Brutal, I answered, but with some pride in my voice.

I thought about the Yoyo Swings, which would have sat me in a baby seat and swung me floating in the sky about 25 feet up, but remembered I needed to have a look at the Arts and Crafts Exhibit rooms next to the Coliseum.  Having finished my challenge to ride all the scaries, every work that greeted my grateful eyes looked like a consoling masterpiece.  

The fair will continue through Saturday.  Armbands will be sold again Saturday afternoon.  The horticulture and art exhibits will be open throughout the days and evenings.